Rosenblatt: OLED ‘iPhone 8’ to Skip Touch ID, Pushing Production Up a Week

Share & comment

Rosenblatt: OLED ‘iPhone 8’ to Skip Touch ID, Pushing Production Up a Week

Share & comment

According to a new research note by Rosenblatt analyst Jun Zhang, Apple’s upcoming 10th anniversary edition ‘iPhone 8’ with OLED display will not include a fingerprint sensor or Touch ID, due to a low yield rate, and as a result, mass production of the device has been pushed to the third week of September, a week earlier than previously expected (via StreetInsider).

“On the other hand, they do not believe Apple has changed its 2H production forecast at this time due to the potential slower ramp of iPhone 8 OLED production, allowing some time for a yield rate improvement. They expect iPhone 8 OLED production to be around 35-40 million units in 2H17 (5 million and 30-35 million in Q3 and Q4, respectively)”

While Zhang’s timeline is pretty much consistent with the one claimed by KGI Securties analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, he however argued that ‘iPhone 8’ may have just 2 to 4 million units in its launch quarter. But if Apple replaces Touch ID on the anniversary edition iPhone with advanced facial recognition, it may improve the yield quite significantly.

The analyst expects the iPhone 7s, iPhone 7s Plus models, both of which should retain LCDs and fingerprint sensors, to reach a production of around 50 million units in 2H17 (15 million and 35 million in Q3 and Q4, respectively), while maintaining a Neutral for AAPL, and price target of $150.

Share & comment

Im not a fan of them replacing the Touch ID – No facial recognition software has worked well with day to day glasses wearers and I dont want to have to remove my glasses every time I want to unlock my phone, download something so use apple pay.. The Touch ID was one of the better things Apple has done to keep the phone secure. If this years Iphone doesnt have the Touch ID I will stick with the Iphone 7

Surveillance

How is Apple Pay going to work without Touch ID?

Joe

Doesn’t make sense to drop Touch ID, especially when they just ported it to the Mac last year with the new MBP’s. We’ve also seen concepts for a Magic Keyboard with Touch ID. If they can’t produce a unit with Touch ID, they may need to re-think their entire product line. Unless facial recognition can be a full Touch ID replacement that’s just as, if not more, reliable.

Gerry Lee

Putting your face close to the debit terminal along with your phone to activate apple pay, via face recognition lol.

Yah not likely, they wouldn’t drop something they have for sake of production

AccordTR

Definitely worth using an Apple Watch at that point.

Dave B

I suspect it would be something like double tap a button to signify you want to use ApplePay, then look at the phone to authenticate, then you are free to tap the terminal. I don’t see that being so much of a problem.
But if they are having so many problems / yield issues with Touch ID, I can’t see how dropping it only buys them a *week*. That implies that if they waited a week then all the problems would be sorted out. If it were months then I could buy the argument/rumour.